By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.8.A. 277 
Bishop of Sherborne diocese, which covered all Somerset and Devon, 
it can hardly be the case that Selwoodshire meant all Sherborne 
diocese—at least thete is no sort of proof of it. But another 
‘chronicler speaks of him as the “ Bishop of the West Wood,” 
meaning all west of Selwood. When I met with this for the first 
time, the other day, it recalled to my memory a speech made to me 
fifty years ago by an old man near Bradford. I was then living at 
Farley Castle, about three miles from Bradford, and there is, half- 
way to Bradford, a small village called Westwood, at which there 
is a pretty little Church of the style of about 1500. I walked up one 
day to examine it. An old fellow, the parish clerk, showed me about, 
and for something to say I asked him how old Westwood Church 
was. He couldn’t exactly say, but he had always heard tell that it 
was the Mother Church of Wiltshire. I rather stared, because, 
though I was then quite new to this county, still I had heard of 
Salisbury Cathedral, and fancied that 7¢ had some slight claim to 
be called the Mother Church. But the man’s speech struck me 
very much, because in these old traditional stories, however absurd, 
there is generally some sort of foundation; but I never was able to 
account for what he said till I was preparing this paper. You have 
just heard that the first bishop was called the Bishop of Westwood 
—meaning Selwood. This bit of church history had somehow or 
other floated like a seed through the air, had lodged and taken root 
at the village, and so the old people had got it into their logic and 
ereed that “ if the first bishop was called the Bishop of Westwood, 
of course it must have been their Westwood”: ergo, the Church at 
Westwood must have been the first, the top, the Mother Church of 
Wiltshire. 
I said there was another person, whose name at all events, is still 
preserved in the forest, from Anglo-Saxon times—this was St. Algar. 
There is a farm so called by the roadside on the way from Frome to 
Maiden Bradley, belonging to the Marquis of Bath. I mentioned 
to him one day that there had been a chapel there: we went to look, 
and certainly found in the farmhouse part of the old roof still re- 
maining, but not much else; and near it is a bridge called in old 
maps St. Algar’s bridge. The name is sometimes written Awgar, 
VOL. XXIII.—NO. LXIX. U 
